Artesyn ATCA-7470 Installation and Use (October 2014) - Manual (Page 203)

Chapter 8
ATCA-7470 Installation and Use (6806800P15K) 203
Boot Bank Selection
8.1 BIOS Boot Bank Selection
The ATCA-747x provides redundant payload boot flashes for both manual and automatic crisis
recovery.
The general concept is that there is always an active and a standby SPI flash device. The role of
the two devices can be reversed by an FPGA, for this to work the FPGA has to drive the chip
select signals to the SPI flashes. The final decision on which of the two devices has to be active
or standby is done by the IPMC.
The IPMI command Set/Get System Boot Options together with the parameter #96 can be
used to specify the BIOS boot bank from which the payload shall boot from persistently. For
details, see
System Boot Options Commands on page 211 .
8.1.1 Boot Bank Sensor
The ATCA-747x provides a Boot Bank Sensor illustrating from which BIOS Boot Bank the boot
firmware has been booted earlier. For more details, see Boot Bank sensor in
Table "Sensor Data
Records" on page 262 .
8.1.2 Fail Safe Logic
Failsafe is a mechanism to implement automatic BIOS boot bank crisis recovery. It observes the
BIOS boot phase, to reset the processor and to swap the BIOS boot banks in case of accidental
boot firmware hang ups.
Failsafe can be enabled or disabled at any time either:
 The use of an IPMI OEM command called Set/Get Feature Configuration parameter #224,
for details, see
Set Feature Configuration on page 229 .
 BIOS setup menu
This function is implemented within the IPMI management controller. In case the firmware
doesn’t boot and the BMC watchdog expires, the IPMI management controller will swap the
boot banks before resetting the CPU. Thus, the blade can recover by booting from its
redundant boot flash, which contains the old active firmware image, which did work before
firmware upgrade.